


close the windows

by lightningmcqveer



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Abuse, Gen, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:53:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24155404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightningmcqveer/pseuds/lightningmcqveer
Summary: monsters live in shadows, she told him.
Relationships: Kozume Kenma & Kuroo Tetsurou
Kudos: 10





	close the windows

tetsu’s mother always told him to shut the windows in his room before it got dark. monsters live in shadows, she told him, one hand running gently through his messy hair, and they’ll take you away from me. 

so like the good, obedient child he was, tetsu regularly made sure to close the latch extra tight, just so the monsters couldn’t slip in through the teeny space like he’d seen bugs do often. he never wanted to leave his mother, couldn’t imagine what he would do without her.

he’d tell her he did that so very carefully  every evening, quite proud of how he was protecting their home, and her empty eyes would crinkle, lips quirking up in the smile that was saved for him, all for him.

‘i want to be with you always!’ he had declared one day. 

she had smiled. those days, it felt like that was all she did. but.. did it count if it didn’t feel like a smile, just a quick upward tug of her lips to satisfy him, sate his concern?

‘pray, tetsu. i’ll be here as long as god wills me to.’ 

she was wrong though, he thinks, she was brilliant and beautiful and the best person in the world, but in the end she was wrong. 

monsters existed in bright daylight too. they were everywhere, from the person who’d ran over her pretty, pretty body, to his father, to tetsu himself. 

he closes his eyes just before her casket goes down in the ground, hand gripped in kenma’s smaller one. he doesn’t want to see it, doesn’t want his last memory of her to be cold and gone and dead. 

it’s a weird, weird feeling to feel nothing. 

the day he loses her is the last day tetsu prays. he wishes her a safe journey to heaven, away from any monsters. they would never harm her again.

not when they had tetsu to torment. he would protect her, he swears, even in death. 

he visits her for the first time two years later, a fresh bruise blooming all over his face. 

it’s violently purple against his skin tone, but tetsu decides it’s pretty. well, prettier than the ones he hides under his clothes. they’ve grown sickly and blue, harder to hide. 

he wonders what excuse he’ll come up for this one tomorrow. kenma doesn’t believe him anymore, tetsu knows, the way their eyes narrow, concern showing in every way they treat tetsu, but kenma never asks. 

tetsu’s not sure if he wants them to. 

he dumps the flowers on her grave.

“you were wrong.” he spits out his first words to her. “you were so fucking wrong.” 

he’s been numb for so, so long. he’s forgotten how anything else feels. 

but this vile emotion that rises in his body, he remembers it. 

anger— no, this isn’t anger. tetsu had been angry before, it never used to feel like this, like it would stab a knife at the top of his spine and cut it down all the way to his hip bone, open up his body for all to see the horrible emptiness inside, spreading agony deep in his cells. 

it’s rage. tetsu’s furious, he realizes, hands trembling from the way it burns and churns inside, destroying any and all sense he had left in him. 

“they’re everywhere! and you left me— alone, all alone."

it’s getting harder to keep his voice down, throat clenching around every word he whispers. 

‘stop,’ his heart begs, ‘you know it isn’t true.’

he knows. tetsu knows. but god, that’s far worse: knowing. 

they say that behind anger lies love. tetsu would disagree. what causes all this contradictions in his head, has his heart in a vice grip, it isn’t because of love. 

he’s so full of hatred it’s gnawing him away from the inside, like a slow, slow poison in his organs, leaving him hollow. if they cracked open his skull and looked, all they’d find is ugliness and the colour red. 

tetsu doesn’t know what he hates more. the world, his parents, himself, or the voices that tell him to _snap snap snap snap snap—_

“how could you?”

with that, his tears finally break out, knees giving out til he’s kneeling on her grave, and then he starts sobbing, pleading, mumbling incoherent prayers for her to come back.

_ here i am, at your alter again. will you deny me this time too, lord? _

he needs her, needs her so fucking bad it’s killing him, needs to see her laugh again, feel her thin fingers curl up in his hair. he’d do anything to hear her chastising him for sleeping the way he does one more time. 

‘they’ll take you away from me.’

huh. he has to give his mother credit. eventually, it had been a monster who separated them.

god, the maker of monsters. god, the monster.

kenma finds him lying there hours later, unresponsive and eyes staring into nothing, and drags him to their own home instead. 

they’re almost asleep, face to face, when tetsu’s hand wraps around kenma’s wrist and asks them in a small voice, “can you close the window?”

kenma’s glad they shut the lights off earlier. tetsu doesn’t have to see them hastily wipe tears off this way. 

he enters his house quietly the next night, heats up the leftovers, and makes his way up to his room. 

“not even a hello to your own father, tetsurou?” his father says, swatting a mosquito away. 

tetsu doesn’t answer. 

he grumbles something about ungratefulness, “shut the windows. too many of these around here these days.”

tetsu nods and walks up, locking the door behind him, checking twice to make sure it won’t open. 

he sighs before deciding to just sleep in his jeans. a travesty, some would call it, but he can easily rest in them.

tetsu figures he would hate himself less in the morning if he didn’t have to get out of bed freezing and pant-less. 

‘why am i doing this?’

the thought escapes him before he can discard it, the weight of his words rendering him both immobile and with the nasty urge to _move._

with shaky steps and his mother's voice begging him not to, he walks into the light, undoes the latch, slides the glass open, and turns his back to it. 

he never, ever closes the window again. the monsters outside had nothing on those who resided in that house already. 

he wakes up sweaty one night, to see a black figure in his window, one leg in, the other hanging out. 

tetsu wonders if the figure would slice perfectly into two if he slams the window extra tight, just like the flies did back when tetsu was a kid, leaving a tiny bloody mess. 

the sound of his breathing fills the room, both staring at the other.

“please,” he starts, “take me far, far away from here.” 

tetsu can’t see their face, it’s too dark to figure out if they even have a mask on, but something in him knows that the monster is smiling as the knife slices his throat, moving with such elegance he doesn’t even see them coming, just the shadow of their wings.

_ his angel. a revelation.  _

his fingers twitch over his mouth, tracing the red drops on his lips as gargling sounds resound in the silence.

he’s the one making those voices, he realizes, sputtering and choking on his own blood. 

how.. how wonderful. 

this is what he had been waiting for. death. a saviour. 

tetsu makes sure to smile. that is how he wants to meet his mother, happy and free and content.

he'll hug her with all the strength he has in his lanky frame, clean of all previous touch. it wouldn't be good for him if she remembers the last time his hands had been on her. 

all it had took was a little push, even with his tiny childish body to see her right where he wanted her to be.

the road. the car. the art. the realisation of what he had done. the glee he had to hide with forced horror. 

with that in mind, he chases the darkness.

tetsu would never be red again. 

**Author's Note:**

> it is 6 am (maybe??) i am somehow listening to 2000s heavy metal. this seems like a fever dream.


End file.
